The Donkey Lane Incident

The year is 1968 and although Kate and her friend were knee high to grasshoppers .. They had the freedom that today’s kids could only dream about.. todays kids would never ever be able grasp that Kate and her friend Marianne were walking down a very remote track on their own. Their parents did not know precisely where they were. No one thought anything of it back then. Kids knew how to safely cross a road, people were assumed to be trustworthy... so long as they were back by teatime and before it got dark.....what harm could possibly befall them?

ADVENTURES

None ever had ..but there was one occasion that Kate had never talked about to anyone. If she didn’t talk about it she didn’t have to think about it and if she didn’t have to think about it .... she could pretend it never happened.

MEMORY LANE?

It was 50 years ago.. more..She and Marianne had stolen a pack of cigarettes from Marianne’s doddery old uncle, he’d never have noticed...and now they were making their way down the donkey lane, a dusty unsealed path that branched out into fields on one side and woods on another.

RISKY BUSINESS

They were strolling along at a leisurely pace, puffing greedily on the ciggies, ready to stub them out and hide them from any passerby. There weren’t going to be any passers by, that was the whole point of choosing the donkey lane. They were armed to the hilt with chewing gum and and tiny bottles of mouthwash... being caught smoking would be like being rumbled committing the crime of the century... it couldn’t happen.

They continued walking, hyper vigilant but still having an in depth conversation about the boys they fancied.. yes Kate was only ten and Marianne a few years older... but those were the times... girls were boy crazy from a pretty young age....

A SPY

Marianne spotted him first... on the other side of a field of corn... he was wearing a checked shirt and had the long hair favoured by guys at the time.

The girls put out the cigarettes, but he was far enough away for it not be an issue. They carried on walking, away from him and from the field’s edge.

Then he saw them... and he started hollering...! At first they couldn’t make out what he was saying, but then they realised with mounting alarm.. than he was coming towards them ...actually he was sprinting towards them..

THREAT

His words became clear.. he was calling them bitches and whores.. he was screaming it

RUN!

They turned and ran themselves.. Kate looked over her shoulder and saw to her absolute horror that he was brandishing a scythe... and gaining on them rapidly.

The girls rounded a corner, he was so close now ... but they were momentarily out of sight.. they threw themselves into a tangle of undergrowth ... they were sure he hadn’t spotted that ... and that they could not be seen.

HIDDEN

He kept coming though berating their hidden selves with the foulest of language... and worse.. he was slashing through the undergrowth with the scythe.

FEAR

Kate had time to think that she was glad she and Marianne had peed at that run down toilet block by the abandoned playground that was the gateway to the lane..before they had got very far in their walk... because the terror she was feeling now was squeezing on her bladder, her bowels and she could feel nausea rising in her throat..

She pressed herself further into the dirt as the swishing scythe came closer... she noticed that the crazy man’s pockets were stuffed with notebooks papers and cards.. one was almost falling out his pocket.

He was about 3 feet away from them now slashing in a straight line ... Kate gazed glassily at the postcard. It said “greetings from” ...well greetings from something.. she could not see what ...and on it was an impossibly blue sky and foam specked ocean... with a white ship on the horizon. It fell from his pocket... and somehow he noticed it.. and was momentarily distracted from his frenzied task.

He stopped raving and stopped slashing.. grumbled to himself.. and after retrieving the card and stuffing it back into his pocket.. began to walk back in the direction he’d come from.

SAFE?

The girls did not know for sure how long they laid there for... they didn’t know if he was still nearby, but they felt they had to risk it... they had never run so far ...so fast.

They didn’t look round..

Kate had never told anyone that she felt her life had been spared by an unstable man’s obsession with a postcard of a ship on a Mediterranean horizon.